The Fretboard build like a rockstar

The Fretboard is a pretty simple Arduino project that visualizes the build status of up to 24 projects with an addressable LED array.
The latest incarnation of the project is housed in an old classical guitar hence the name ;-)

It's all open-sourced, so check out the "Resources" page for code. Feel free to borrow any ideas for your own build.

The build has been a slow burn 3 months of little packages of components arriving from China, and another couple
of months procrastinating over different ideas for housing the project - the physical build is far more involved than the
electronics, which couldn't be simpler!

Arrival
This is where it started - taking delivery of a WS2811-based addressable LED Strip from
aliexpress for all of USD$17.

Build the Bridge
The easy part - not many components involved.
All driven from a 5V 2.5A power supply.

Ghost in the Shell
As installed within the guitar body. Mounting the Arduino is a bit old school, but works OK.

La Guitarra
I bought this in Brunswick about 25 years ago, and it's the one guitar to survive all my many moves since,
more for sentimental reasons than any sonorous character.
Finally, for the chop!

On The Block
For those about to chop, we salute you.

Sliced and Drilled
Drilling clean holes through the neck turned out to be troublesome.
Perhaps my rusty toolsmanship, or just tinder dry wood, but I managed to splinter
what should have been smooth bores for the LEDs.

Stripped
A quick strip back of the grundgy neck and body before painting.

Undercover
Painting begins with a white undercoat in acrylic.
Here you can clearly see one LED holes I fluffed.

Painted Lady
The somewhat amateurish paint-job complete!
It has a gloss varnish finish.

Boing! I'm In the Back
Ethernet and power connectors.
You can also see the LED array strung along the back of the neck -
turned out no special tie-down required for the wiring.

Crank It!
Bench test, and all's looking good.
Only 16 LEDs alight, because that's the number of projects I have on CI at the moment -
the remaining 8 LEDs will be used as more projects added to the CI server.

With More Drama
Enter the arena

The heart of the project is an Arduino with an Ethernet Shield.
It polls the web for current build status, parses the result, and drives an addressable LED array
to display the status of up to 24 projects.
The 24-project limit is an artificial one, imposed by the physical housing on a guitar neck
(2 projects per fret to the 12th fret). It could do many more

See the
FretBoard
GitHub repository for the Arduino code and more details of the on-board processing.

The Arduino has limited memory and networking support, so to simplify process of getting
build status, the request is proxied via a site which offers the build status in a simplified CSV format over HTTP.

Electronics Layout

Circuit Schematic

All the code and design details for The Fretboard are open-source.
Feel free to fork or borrow any ideas for your own build.
If you build anything similar, I'd love to hear about it -
you contact me through GitHub or on twitter
@tardate